William Dennie, Merchant and Bachelor

On the list of political troublemakers in Boston published in the New-York Gazetteer in September 1774, the last name is William Denning.

There was no one in Boston with that name. In their analysis of this list, Dan and Leslie Landrigan of the New England Historical Society guessed that meant William Denning (1740–1819), a New York Whig who went on to serve one term in the U.S. House.

That makes no sense, or, as the Landrigans put it, “William Denning stands out” on a list of men from Boston because he wasn’t from Boston.

I think whoever wrote the list must have been thinking of William Dennie (1726–1783), a merchant whom the Boston Whigs pulled onto committees when they wanted more representation from the business community.

Writing in 1898, H. W. Small characterized Dennie as “a wealthy Scot.” His family roots were in Scotland, but Dennie was born in Fairfield, Connecticut, the seventh child of a large established family.

Dennie was working as a merchant in Boston by his early twenties, according to a 1752 lawsuit against William Vassall. In 1755 he joined many other businessmen in signing a petition to abate Boston’s taxes. In the next decade his shop was “at the lower End of King Street,” near the Long Wharf. Among many other goods he sold tea, some shown by John W. Tyler as coming from Holland. By 1771, the town tax list found he owned a house, a warehouse, one slave, 280 tons of shipping, and £1,500 worth of merchandise.

William’s older brother John Dennie was also a prominent Boston merchant in the 1750s, building an estate in the part of Cambridge that became Brighton. He went bankrupt in the wake of Nathaniel Wheelwright’s default in early 1765. Politically, John Dennie was a Loyalist; he remained in Massachusetts but died in 1777.

John and William’s brother Joseph Dennie also came to live in Boston. He married into the Green family who staffed many American print shops and the Boston Customs office. He went insane around 1776. Joseph’s namesake son worked in James Swan’s mercantile house as a teenager before becoming one of the early republic’s leading essayists.

Another of William Dennie’s nephews was William Hooper, who moved to North Carolina and represented that colony at the Continental Congress, signing the Declaration of Independence.

Unlike William Molineux, John Bradford, and Nathaniel Barber, three other businessmen on the 1774 list, Dennie was not prominent at many Boston protests. He was more the type to sign petitions and join clubs.

In fact, in 1768 Dennie declined to sign the town’s first non-importation agreement to oppose the Townshend duties. By early 1770, however, the Whigs had won him over, and he served on committees to remonstrate with the remaining holdouts, particularly the Hutchinson brothers.

In November 1772 Dennie agreed to be part of Boston’s new committee of correspondence while other prominent merchants, including John Hancock and Thomas Cushing, declined.

On 27 May 1774, John Rowe wrote in his diary that Dennie was one of the loudest voices booing the Customs Commissioners when they gathered for a dinner, along with Molineux and Paul Revere. Later that year Dennie was one of Molineux’s pallbearers.

That was as radical as Dennie got, it appears. He didn’t become part of the large committee to enforce the First Continental Congress’s boycott of goods from Britain. In August 1776 he begged out of serving on Boston’s wartime committee of safety. Three years later he was criticized for charging too much for duck cloth and tea, and had to go before a town committee and promise not to do that again.

William Dennie never married. According to John Mein, he “kept Mr. Barnabas Clark’s Wife [Hepzibah] many years. & employs her Husband abroad while he is getting Children for him at home.” The 1771 tax list does say Dennie was hosting Barnabas Clark (1722–1772) at his house. He later employed the Clarks’ son Samuel as a shipmaster.

In 1773 there was a dispute in Barnstable over whether that town should appoint a committee of correspondence to communicate with Boston’s. Joseph Otis recalled that a neighbor named Edward Bacon objected to the character of the Boston committee men, specifically

Mr. Mollineaux Mr. Dennie & Dr. [Thomas] Young as men of very bad Characters (as near as I can Remember), Intimating one was an Atheist, one Never Went to Meeting, and the Other was Incontinent

Molineux and Young were known for their religious skepticism, which leaves Dennie as “Incontinent”; Dr. Samuel Johnson defined that word as meaning “Unchaste; indulging unlawful pleasure.”

When Dennie died in 1783, he left legacies to many relatives, but the biggest bequest was to Hepzibah Swan (1757–1825, shown above), wife of James Swan, his executor. She was also the daughter of Barnabas and Hepzibah Clark.

When Did James Swan Get Out of Prison?

In her Age of Revolutions article about the American financier James Swan, jailed for debt in Napoleonic France, Erika Vause writes:

Reporting [creditor Herman] Lubbert’s death in September 1830, several [French] newspapers indicated that Swan had been released during the July Revolution, when crowds had freed debtors and political prisoners. There is at least one contemporary report that Swan had indeed attempted to return to Sainte-Pélagie afterwards. Yet, Parisian periodicals, which had followed Swan’s decades-long legal battles to obtain his release, were largely silent about Swan’s whereabouts after 1829.

Vause located definite records of Swan’s death and burial in March 1831, more than half a year after the July Revolution. She even found the area of his grave, shown here.

Nevertheless, within a few years French journalists were writing that Swan had died a month or even a day after becoming free. That legend was too good not to print.

And here’s where I complicate the story still further. Newspapers in three countries reported that Swan’s release was imminent in October 1826, or almost four years before the July Revolution.

This article was printed in the Massachusetts Journal on 14 Dec 1826:

All Americans who have been in Paris, have known or heard of their compatriot Swan, (formerly of Boston,) who has been for 20 years a close prisoner for debt, in Paris. By the annexed article from the Journal des Debats of 30th of Oct. it would appear that he is at length liberated:

“Every one has heard of the famous American, James Swan. This stranger, who owns in Virginia and Kentucky, lands to the amount of 19,000 acres, has undergone 18 years of confinement, which is said to be somewhat voluntary, at St. Pelagie, and solely to vex his creditors. The rumour of his wealth can alone give any probability to such a tale, though it is certain, that after an ineffectual attempt to sell his lands, he has been unable with all that wealth to pay his debts, and has therefore been subject to our commercial laws against foreigners. It was in vain that from four to five years he petitioned the courts for a discharge, he was always defeated.

[“]Finally, after having compromised with the greater portion of his creditors, and on the point of quitting the fatal walls: he was suddenly recommitted, after several hearings, at the suit of one of his creditors more refractory than the rest; and the whole cause it was supposed would be referred. Not so however; at the opening of the court yesterday, M. Mermillo announced that the affair was settled, and that his client was finally about to be restored to liberty.”

Those who have read “The Hermits in Prison,” by [Etienne] Jouy and others, may remember that the fact of Mr. Swan’s imprisonment, his appearance and manner of life, are therein detailed.

On 20 December, the United States’ Telegraph newspaper out of Washington, D.C., reported similar news, attributing this paragraph to “The London Globe of the 2d ultimo [i.e., last month]”:

“Mr. James Swan, an American, who is said to possess 1,900,000 acres of land in Kentucky and Virginia, but who, from want of ready money to settle with his creditors in Paris, has been a prisoner in St. Pelagie for the last 18 years, has at length succeeded in making an arrangement with them, and is to be liberated immediately.”

The Massachusetts Record item no doubt led to the statement in the Boston News-Letter and City Record on 23 December that I quoted back here.

It could be important that all these reports said that Swan was about to be released, not that he was. Perhaps another creditor or legal obstacle popped up, and he stayed in jail. However, I didn’t find any American newspapers running follow-up reports or corrections despite public interest.

If the Journal de Debats story can be verified, then it’s clear that James Swan lived in Paris for more than four years after his release, which had nothing to do with the July 1830 revolution at all. He really didn’t want to come back to Boston.

The Mysteries of James Swan

One figure from Revolutionary Boston whom I’ve mentioned but haven’t gossiped about in depth is the Scottish-born businessman James Swan.

That’s because I see so many holes in Swan’s story, and so much of what smells like legend stuffed into some of those holes, that I don’t have a handle on him yet.

It’s clear that Swan, after making himself one of the richest financiers in the new American republic, spent most of his last years living in a debtors’ prison in France.

It’s still opaque why that happened. An official version—“official” in the sense that it was actually published in a report of the city of Boston in 1884—states:

It seems that Mr. Swan engaged also in various enterprises in France, which proved unsuccessful, and that his creditors caused his detention for many years. It is said that they hoped thus to compel his wife to purchase his freedom, she having a large inherited fortune settled upon her before her marriage. It is also said that Col. Swan refused to allow any such ransom to be paid, and that he remained a nominal prisoner until his death in 1831, although the kindness of his relatives and friends made his sojourn as pleasant as possible.

The same story with more detail appears in the recollections of James Freeman Clarke, a collateral descendant, published in the Massachusetts Historical Society Proceedings for 1887.

Last summer Erika Vause shed light on the French side of this mystery in an article for Age of Revolutions, “‘The Great Air of Liberty Choked Him’: Finance, Freedom, and the Legendary Death of Colonel James Swan.’”

Vause wrote:

Certain facts are readily ascertained. Swan did spend over two decades in French debtors’ prison for a debt of around 625,000 francs he owed to [former partner Herman] Lubbert, a fact reflected in dozens of legal briefs filed both by Swan and his creditor. . . . The law of September 10, 1807 allowed the arrest of all foreign debtors in France as a precautionary measure. While the new laws had limited detainment to five years for most debtors, there was no maximum stay for foreigners. The American colonel entered Sainte-Pélagie in July 1808 and would not emerge for over twenty years.

While in prison, Swan becomes harder to track. Although there is little concrete evidence for rumors that he lived luxuriously, maintaining several mistresses and footing the release of his fellow prisoners, such behavior would not have been unusual for elite debt prisoners. Swan explained his “stubbornness” with Lubbert in terms of honor. “Only considerations much superior to interest,” Swan maintained in one of his frequent petitions, “can dictate such a conduct and make one prefer to his liberty an obstinacy directed by honor and the correctness of his own cause.” However, Swan’s long stay probably derived as much from his actual insolvency, or at least lack of liquid assets in France, a claim Swan himself fruitlessly forwarded multiple times before courts in an effort to obtain release, as from a principled decision to not pay a debt he insisted he did not owe.

Vause analyzes how Swan’s behavior fit into the code of honor for merchants of his time. She also shows how the legend of the principled American stuck on the French side of the Atlantic as well as here in Boston. Within the first decade after his death in 1831, French newspapers invoked Swan’s case in discussions about the injustice of imprisonment for debt.

But people also interpreted Swan’s death a relatively short time after he left prison as showing that freedom was too dangerous for him. There were rumors he tried to return to the jail. One French warden wrote in 1836, “the great air of liberty suffocated him.” Clarke said the same in Boston: “the air of liberty seemed to disagree with him, for he died shortly after.” Such details have made me wonder if mental illness played a role in his case.

TOMORROW: But when was James Swan actually released?

Thousands of Curiosities from the Harvard Libraries

The Harvard Libraries have created a set of webpages called “CURIOSity Digital Collections” which provide “Curated views that provide specialized search options and unique content.”

That content comes from the university’s own holdings, and since the Harvard system adds up to one of the largest libraries on the planet, there’s a lot of content to choose from.

Some of the topics covered by these pages are:

• the South Sea Bubble of 1720
• France in the Americas
• American Currency over the centuries (watch the quantity of bills explode during the Revolutionary War)
• The Artemas Ward House in Shrewsbury
• English Crime and Execution Broadsides of the 18th and 19th centuries
• Joseph Story, justice on the U.S. Supreme Court from Marblehead

The newest collection looks at Slavery, Abolition, Emancipation, and Freedom. Linking to more than a thousand items related to black history and culture, this collection is the result of a university-wide effort that digital collections program manager Dorothy Berry has led since 2020, as reported in the Harvard Gazette.

Some of the eighteenth-century items to explore in that section are:

• Nathaniel Appleton’s Considerations on Slavery; in a Letter to a Friend, printed by Edes and Gill in 1767.
• James Swan’s A Dissuasion to Great-Britain and the Colonies, from the Slave Trade to Africa, printed by Ezekiel Russell in 1772.
• A Forensic Dispute on the Legality of Enslaving the Africans; held at the Public Commencement in Cambridge, New-England, July 21st, 1773, credited to Theodore Parsons and Eliphalet Pearson and printed by John Boyle for bookseller Thomas Leverett.
• Jupiter Hammon’s An Address to the Negroes in the State of New-York from 1787.
• Prince Hall’s A Charge Delivered to the Brethren of the African Lodge on the 25th of June, 1792, printed by the Thomas and John Fleet.

Plus, there are pamphlets from the same years printed in Philadelphia, London, and other important British cities.

This collection extends into the nineteenth century, so there are many items from the fight for (and against) abolition in the U.S. of A. and around the world. Plus, more to come.

Amos Lincoln and His Prayerful Master

When Amos Lincoln died in 1829, the Columbian Centinel newspaper described him as “one of the intrepid band who consigned the Tea to the ocean, in 1773.” But it took another couple of decades before details of Lincoln’s story got into print.

The earliest version I’ve seen is in the Annals of the Massachusetts Charitable Mechanic Association, compiled by printer Joseph T. Buckingham and published in 1853. It said:

AMOS LINCOLN was born in Hingham, March 18, 1754. At fourteen, he was apprenticed to a Mr. Crafts, of Boston, with whom he remained about six years. He was present at the destruction of the Tea in Boston harbor in 1773, (being then about nineteen years old,) and assisted in the execution of that intrepid act. It is related that his master, apprehending that he might be out on some perilous enterprize, prayed most earnestly that he might be protected and prospered, and was pleasantly disappointed the next morning when he returned in safety.

That’s not how I’d used the word “disappointed,” but I see what they’re getting at.

The Massachusetts Historical Society published a longer version of the tale in 1873 as it was observing the centenary of the Tea Party. Its Proceedings volume reported:

Mr. T. C. Amory expressed his wish to place on the honored roll two other names well known in our community, associated with the event which we this evening celebrate; namely, those of Amos Lincoln and James Swan. The former was born March 17, 1753, at Hingham. . . .

Lincoln…was apprenticed to Mr. Crafts, of Boston, who resided at the north part of the town, and still serving his time with him when the event occurred which is now commemorated. Mr. Crafts, possibly not wishing that his other apprentices should incur the consequences of so bold a proceeding, though not averse to Amos taking part in it, secretly procured an Indian disguise for him, and dressed him in his own chamber, darkening his face to the required tint.

As we find that “Thomas Crafts” joined, in 1762, St. Andrew’s Lodge of Freemasons, which met at the Green Dragon Tavern, where, as well as at Edes & Gill’s printing-office, the arrangements for the night’s work were made, there is little doubt that he and Amos’s master was one and the same person.

(Actually, that was an error.)

Exemplary in his habits of devotion, he prayed long and fervently that the young man might be protected and prospered in his enterprise; and after some hours his anxieties were relieved by his safe return. That there was some solemn pledge among them not to reveal who were their associates, is evident from the reticence of all concerned; for, though Mr. Lincoln later acknowledged his own participation, he would not mention the particulars or betray the names of his companions.

Then came the profile of Amos Lincoln in Francis S. Drake’s Tea Leaves of 1884:

Born in Hingham, Mass., March 17, 1753, died at Quincy, Mass., January 15, 1829. He was apprenticed to a Mr. Crafts, at the North End, who, on the evening of December 16, 1773, secretly procured for him an Indian disguise, dressed him in his own chamber,—darkening his face to the required tint,—and then, dropping on his knees, prayed most fervently that he might be protected in the enterprise in which he was engaged. 

You’ll notice a discrepancy in these profiles about Lincoln’s birthdate. In fact, they’re all wrong. Hingham vital records state that Amos was born on 18 Mar 1753.

Finally, Edward G. Porter’s Rambles in Old Boston from 1886:

Captain Amos Lincoln…came from Hingham to Boston and engaged in house-building, being subsequently employed as carpenter for the new State House. Amos participated in the tea party of Dec. 16, 1773, obtaining his Mohawk disguise through the assistance of his master, Crafts, who, it is said, at family devotions prayed “for the young man out on a perilous errand” that night.

Who was Lincoln’s master? His name was Crafts, he lived “at the North End,” and he was a house carpenter. That must have been Thomas Crafts, Sr.

The Thomas Crafts who joined the St. Andrew’s Lodge was that carpenter’s son, Thomas Crafts, Jr. He was a japanner, or decorative painter, and he lived in the South End. He was deeply involved in Boston’s political resistance, from the first protests of the “Loyall Nine” in 1765 to the public reading of the Declaration of Independence in 1776.

Despite Thomas Crafts, Jr.’s prominence as a Patriot, he wasn’t listed as a participant in the Tea Party until his family published a family history in 1893. I suspect he might have become too well known to actually set foot on the tea ships.

The Crafts Family credited Amos Lincoln’s grandson, “Frederic W. Lincoln [1817-1898, shown above] (Mayor of Boston from 1857 to 1860 and from 1862 to 1866,)” with passing on the story of how the older Crafts had prepared him for the Tea Party and prayed for him. It’s possible that Frederic Lincoln was the source of all the published lore going back to 1853, or it’s possible that he collected at least some of that lore from printed sources and passed it on.

TOMORROW: Amos Lincoln’s crowd.

Abigail Adams at a Birthday Ball in Boston

In February 1797, the U.S. of A. made plans to celebrate George Washington’s last birthday as President. Some parts of the country were also eager to celebrate the new President who would take office in March, John Adams.

On 17 February, Abigail Adams received an invitation to a banquet and ball in Boston, along with one for her niece Louisa Catherine Smith. The next day, Abigail asked her daughter Nabby to pick out a new dress cap, “a good one proper for me, not a Girlish one.”

“I presume yu will have a Splnded Birth Day,” Abigail wrote to John in Philadelphia; “there are preparations making in Boston to celebrate it. . . . the Note from the Managers requested me to honour them with my attendance, which they should esteem a particular favour, as it is the last publick honour they can Shew the President. thus circumstanced I have determined to attend.”

The ball took place at the Federal Street Theatre, converted into “a magnificent saloon; sumptuously decorated with tapestry hangings; elegantly illuminated with variegated lamps; and fancifully embellished with festoons of artificial flowers.”

Gov. Samuel Adams didn’t attend, and I doubt anyone expected him to; he’d already expressed his disapproval of Boston’s flowering post-independence social scene. Lt. Gov. Moses Gill was deputed to escort in Mrs. Adams at noon. She reported, “His Honours politeness led him to stay untill he had conducted & Seated me at the Supper table. he however escaped as soon after as he could.”

All in all, however, Abigail was pleased with the event:

I do the Managers but Justice when I say, I never saw an assembly conducted with so much order regularity & propriety, I had every reason to be pleased with the marked respect and attention Shewn me. col [Samuel] Bradford, who is really the Beau Nash of ceremonies even marshalld his company [of Cadets], and like the Garter King at Arms calld them over as they proceeded into the Grand Saloon, hung with the prostrate Pride, of the Nobility of France.

[James] Swan had furnishd them with a compleat set of Gobelin Tapresty, as the Ladies only could be Seated at Table with about 20 or 30 of the principle Gentlemen the rest were requested to retire to the Boxes untill the Ladies had Supped, when they left the Table & took their Seats in the Boxes whilst the Gentlemen Sup’d all was order and Decency about half after one, the company returnd to the Ball Room, and I retired with those who accompanied me to the Ball. most of the rest of company remaind untill 4 oclock. . . .

the Seat assignd to the Lady of the President Elect was Hung with Gobeline Tapestry, and in the center of the Room, conspicuous only for the hanging, on my Right the manager placed the Lady of Judge [John] Lowel. and on my Left the Lady of Judge [Increase] Sumner. Judge [Francis] Dana, but not his Lady was present, when I was conducted into the Ball Room the Band were orderd to play the President March.

the Toast were only 6 in Number. . . . every toast save one made the Saloon resound with an universal Clap and a united huza. that was the vice President Elect, I was sorry it was so cold and faint,

Despite the Adamses’ political differences with Thomas Jefferson, Abigail still considered him a personal friend. She didn’t make her break with him until 1804 when she read James Thomson Callender’s revelations of how Jefferson had orchestrated press attacks on her husband while assuring the couple he did no such thing.

One lady, Abigail said, didn’t have a good time at the ball, feeling “mortified & placed in the back ground. . . . how could she expect any thing else?” That was “Mrs [Dorothy] Scott,” the remarried widow of the late governor John Hancock, no longer wife of the state’s most acclaimed politician.

TOMORROW: What President Adams thought of the Philadelphia ceremonies.

More Woes for Cyrus Baldwin

Guest blogger Chris Hurley finishes up his look at the merchant Cyrus Baldwin.

This series so far has revolved around one incident: how Cyrus Baldwin’s 26 pounds of (technically non-odious) Bohea tea was stolen from his brother’s cart near Winter Hill on 4 Jan 1774 and dumped in the river by some who “tho’t it an Insult to be sent through their Town.” The Charlestown Committee of Correspondence refused to involve themselves in the matter.

Baldwin continued to have difficulties as the war approached. His 24 Oct 1774 ad in the Boston Gazette carried a postscript assuring people he was “neither Addresser, Protester, nor Roman Catholick”—suggesting some were saying he was a Loyalist or worse. A 6 Mar 1775 ad in the same newspaper saw him distressed, selling his English and Scotch goods at “50 per cent from the Sterling Cost.”

On 2 May 1776, after the siege of Boston, Baldwin’s ad in the New-England Chronicle indicates that his Boston shop had been looted by the evacuating British troops (and Crean Brush likely). It said that “he once more requests all those who are indebted to him on note, book or otherwise to make speedy payment to him at Woburn, where”—being the indefatigable merchant he was—he was selling sugar, rum, coffee, and “sundry other articles.”

But those setbacks were nothing compared to what Cyrus Baldwin suffered back at Winter Hill in 1784. That was still a sparsely settled stretch on the road between Charlestown and Medford, all but unavoidable if one was traveling to Woburn. Boston’s Continental Journal of 29 July reported:

Mr. Cyrus Baldwin of Woburn, crossing Winter Hill, was attacked by three foot pads who robbed him of his watch and money and, after abusing him very much, made off.

Boston’s Independent Ledger for 26 July had more detail. In addition to robbing Baldwin of 14 shillings and his pinchbeck watch—which this article described very thoroughly—the criminals had beaten Baldwin badly:

during the greatest part of the time they were stripping him, one of the villians was dealing very heavy blows with a club on the left side of his head, and cut his scalp in several places: ’tis hoped they will not prove mortal

The wounds did not prove mortal. And in a stroke of good luck for justice, the theives were apprehended after a subsequent unsuccessful attack on another man. The Continental Journal stated:

At the house where they were concealed was found the watch, purse, pocket-book, &c. of which Mr. Baldwin was robbed.

This time, unlike 1774, the law prosecuted the attack on Winter Hill. The 23 Nov 1784 Connecticut Courant of Hartford reported:

Boston, November 15. Thursday next Barrack and Sullivan, who robbed Mr. Cyrus Baldwin on Winter-hill, and who attempted to rob Major John Swan on Boston neck, as lately mentioned, are to be executed at Cambridge—

(The 27 July Salem Gazette and other Massachusetts papers had reported the second victim was James Swan, shown above.)

The 24 November Massachusetts Spy confirmed the sentence was carried out:

On Thursday last were executed at Cambridge, pursuant to their sentence,…Richard Barrack and John Sullivan for highway-robbery.

Six years later, Cyrus Baldwin died of drowning in Dunstable; that day, 5 Nov 1790, was his fiftieth birthday.

Samuel Thompson of Woburn wrote in his diary two days afterward: “Cyrus Baldwin, Esquire’s, corpse brought to Woburn.” In all the news items and advertisements examined for this story, I never saw Cyrus Baldwin honored with the sobriquet “Esquire” until his death. But that was how the Herald of Freedom reported him on 9 November:

Died]—at Dunstable, the 4th inst. CYRUS BALDWIN, Esq. formerly of Boston.—His funeral will be this afternoon, at two o’clock, from the house of his brother Loammi Baldwin, Esq. at Woburn—where the friends and acquantence of the deceased are desired to attend.

And thus ends the luckless story of Cyrus Baldwin. Thanks for sharing his ups and (mostly) downs, Chris Hurley!

The Last Members of the North End Caucus

Last month I highlighted from the Boston News-Letter and City Record’s 1826 publication of records from the pre-Revolutionary North End Caucus.

The periodical credited “a gentleman at the North End” for sharing his knowledge of the period, and presumably sharing those documents. We know that source was not himself a member of the caucus, however, because the newspaper staff was under the impression that no members were still alive.

Then on 9 December the News-Letter added:

In the News Letter of the 25th ult. [i.e., last month] we gave a catalogue of the most conspicuous patriots of 1771, and 1772, who frequently assembled in Caucus, at the North-End, for the purpose of consulting together, and passing such resolutions, as might be deemed necessary for the preservation of the rights and liberties of the people. We were not aware, at the time of publishing this record, that Perez Morton, esq. [shown here] was the only surviving one of the whole party; but the Gazette of Thursday informs us that he is; and we are gratified in learning that this gentleman still enjoys good health, and the full possession of his rich faculties, and will probably furnish some remarks on the disposition and character of his associates in the leading events of our glorious revolution.

Then on 23 December the periodical published a letter from someone signing with the initials “O.P.”:

It was mentioned in your last “News Letter,” that there was but one member of the Old North-End Caucus, of, 71, and 72, now living, and that was the Hon. Perez Morton. We are glad, however, to learn, by the last advices from Paris, that Col. James Swan, also one of the distinguished patriots in those meetings, is still alive, and has been recently released from the Debtors’ apartments in Paris, after a detention of nearly twenty years.

It may be proper to state, that the apartments, here spoken of, unlike ours for the confinement of Debtors, are extensive and cornmodious, having a fine garden surrounding them, and the tenants at liberty to walk in them, at all hours to enjoy what amusements they please—and to indulge themselves in such a manner of living, as they may think proper, and can afford to pay for—there being within the outer walls several restorators and other places, for the disposal of provisions, liquors, fruits, and confectionary.

“Restorators” was an old term for restaurants.

That description of Swan’s comfortable confinement for debt in Paris matches a lot of other sources from the following decades. However, those sources don’t speak of Swan being released in 1826. Rather, he reportedly remained in detention until 1830, dying shortly afterward. But there are a lot of mysteries about Swan that I'm still muddling through.

More about Bunker Hill from James Winthrop

In 1818, the same year he responded to a map of Bunker Hill published in the Analectic Magazine as quoted yesterday, James Winthrop wrote another letter about the battle published in the North American Review. That second letter was dated 18 June—i.e., right after the battle’s anniversary.

Winthrop was also responding to a statement in Henry Dearborn’s recently published account of the battle, which said that American soldiers had prepared the rail fence “by the direction of the ‘committee of safety,’ of which James Winthrop, Esq. who then, and now lives in Cambridge, was one, as he has within a few years informed me. Mr. Winthrop himself acted as a volunteer on that day, and was wounded in the battle.”

Winthrop insisted that wasn’t right:

I lived in Cambridge all the summer of 1775, and among others was present at the battle of Bunker Hill, on the 17th of June, in that summer. The army was then upon the state establishment [i.e., the Massachusetts army was not yet part of the Continental Army]. About one o’clock, or a little after it, an alarm was given in this vicinity. James Swan, Esq. was then resident here. We two armed ourselves and went down together to Charlestown. A little beyond the College, General Joseph Warren overtook us. We were both known to him and exchanged the passing compliment. But as he was on horseback we did not join company.

When we passed over Bunker Hill, we went immediately to that part of the lines, where the rail-fence stood. There were two fieldpieces there, but no artillery-men with them. Generals [Israel] Putnam and Warren were in conversation by one of them. We spoke with them, and then passed on toward the redoubt. The two generals were standing, and General Putnam had hold of the briddle of his horse; there were then very few, if any men at the fence. When we got to the redoubt, we did not enter, but spent a little time in viewing the situation of the ground and of the enemy. We supposed, from the position of the British troops, that their intention was to advance between our intrenchment and the Mystic river, and that it would become necessary to have that part of our line well guarded. We expressed our opinion, and some of the people about us desired us to go and see if any sufficient force was there. We two accordingly went over to the rail-fence, and being arrived near the place where we had seen the two generals, and where the fieldpieces were still standing, the firing commenced. I did not see either General Putnam or General Warren afterwards on that day.

I have not now the command of dates, but think it was only a few days after this, when the army was taken into continental pay, and General [George] Washington took the command. [Artemas] Ward, Putnam and [William] Heath were general officers, and continued to be generally respected. I never heard any blame cast on General Putnam, and it was about fifteen years after this that he died in peace.

It is altogether a mistake, that either I, or my brother [John Winthrop], was ever on the Committee of Safety. About a month after the battle, if I rightly recollect, the government [i.e., the official Massachusetts General Court] was organized according to the charter, and the Committee of course ceased.

Winthrop’s second letter was thus in basic agreement with his first, which isn’t surprising since he wrote them around the same time. Once again he didn’t provide a complete account of the battle as he’d seen it. He didn’t describe the actual fighting. He didn’t describe the retreat off the peninsula. Dearborn wrote that Winthrop was wounded at the battle, but Winthrop’s own letter says nothing about that.

The North American Review letter was mostly about who was in command of the American forces and what Israel Putnam did. Those were hotly debated questions in the early 1800s, with Putnam’s descendants being particularly keen to make their views known.

The fact that Winthrop was disclaiming the distinction of being on the Committee of Safety and not talking about his wound suggests he might have provided a broad and honest perspective of the battle, rather than puffing himself up. Then again, Winthrop may have bragged to Dearborn and felt pressure to openly disclaim those lies once they became public. Winthrop’s reputation wasn’t the highest—but was his problem being deceitful or too honest?

TOMORROW: Assessing James Winthrop.

James Winthrop Lays Out the Battle of Bunker Hill

Here’s another account of the Battle of Bunker Hill from an American participant. In early 1818 the Analectic Magazine published the map of the battle shown above (image courtesy of Maps of Antiquity). Before publication that magazine’s editors had run it by, among others, James Winthrop (1752-1821), librarian at Harvard College from 1772 to 1787 and later a Massachusetts judge.

The next issue of the magazine published a letter from Winthrop commenting on that map. Apparently, after it was published, he’d found he had more to say:

As far as I can recollect, I believe the plan to be generally correct. The railed fence was, I think, as far as a quarter of a mile from the curtain belonging to the redoubt. There was room for a body of troops to enter that way, which was one circumstance that discomfited our men. There was no such grove as is represented on the plan. There were two or three trees near the fences, and, I believe, not more than that number. I remember two field pieces at the rail fence which covered our left.

When I first got there, generals [Joseph] Warren and [Israel] Putnam were standing by the pieces and consulting together. Very few men were at that part of the lines. I went forward to the redoubt, and tarried there a little while. Mr. James Swan [1754-1830] and myself were in company. Finding that a column of the enemy were advancing toward our left, and not far from Mystic river, we pointed them out to the people without the redoubt, and proposed that some measure should be taken to man the fence, which, when we passed, we had considered as slightly guarded. We two, in the style of the times, were appointed a committee for that purpose. We went directly to the rail fence, and found a body of men had arrived since we had left it. Possibly three hundred would not be an estimate far from the truth.

As soon as we had got to the middle of the line, the firing commenced from the redoubt and continued through our left. The field pieces stood there, and nobody appeared to have the care of them. After an obstinate dispute, our people were driven from the redoubt, and the retreat was rapid from our whole line. I saw one or two young men, in uniform, try to muster a party to bring off the field pieces, but they could not succeed.

In coming down Bunker’s Hill, at the place where the British [later] built their fort, I met a regiment going up, and joined company, still in hopes of repelling the invaders. I have since learned that it was Col. [Thomas] Gardner’s regiment. He being badly wounded was removed, and his regiment was not deployed.

When the firing commenced from the redoubt, the smoke rose from the lower part of the street. A man near me pointed to it as “the smoke from the guns.” This shows that the fire was in a line with the redoubt and the middle of the rail fence. By laying a ruler from the middle of the rail fence, as marked upon the plan, and over that side of the fort next the main street, it will cross the northern side of the square where the court-house stood. After the destruction of the town, the places of the court-house and meeting-house were cleared of the ruins to form the present square. An irregular mass of buildings was also removed in front of the present hotel, and extended that corner of the square to its present magnitude. As well as I can conclude from this statement, I am inclined to believe the plan nearly correct.

Not the most dramatic account, is it? All the actual fighting got subsumed into the phrase “obstinate dispute.” Later reference books said Winthrop was wounded in that battle, but, if he was, he wrote nothing about that.

However, Winthrop wrote a little more a couple of months later.

TOMORROW: Let’s try this again, Judge Winthrop.